Tulip Cards

Paper after cutting into it for the last page

I've had a piece of paper with tulips on it in my stash for several years. It was a pretty paper (aren't they all) but the tulips took up half the page and I had no idea how or when (or even if) I would ever use it. 

However, the pink background was the perfect colour for my last page so I cut into that sheet at last, using the top part for a couple of strips and a some ticket die-cuts. I figured that I was never going to use the paper at the full 12x12 size anyway, and this way at least part of it would be used.

Then I realised that although it was a difficult paper to use on a scrapbook page, it would be possible to use it for cards. The row of tulips had gaps in between some of the flower heads and, with care, I could cut it into three pieces, with one, two and three tulips. Each piece was a different width, leading to cards in three different shapes/sizes.

I started from the right, with two flowers on my first card. The paper was large enough to cover a standard 4x6 card, so that's what I did, but everything else I added to it looked wrong. This is the third iteration of the card - I finally made the paper a little narrower and added a punched border strip in green.

I used the middle section, with three tulips, for my next card. This was wider and seemed suited to a square panel. The width of the flower panel was dictated by the position of the flowers and my square was too small for the card, so I matted it on some old mulberry paper. Finally I tied a ribbon around the flower panel.

The single tulip on the left of the paper gave me a tall, narrow card. The background at that point has faded from pink to grey-green so I switched to pink mulberry paper behind the flower, and added a border sticker to the bottom of the panel.